Mosaic Tablet Found in Barada Valley

DAMASCUS, (ST) – A specialized team representing the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums said that the people in the town of Burhliya located in Damascus countryside at Wadi (River) Barada had found a mosaic tablet by accident and informed the authorities about its existence. The tablet has been documented  and transferred to the National Museum in Damascus where it will be restored, studied and qualified to be displayed in the museum.

The tablet looks as if it was a part of a very important building and wrought slickly by small stone cubes. The tablet is 42 square meters, which is a part of a larger tablet that was vandalized during the previous decades and led to the loss of a lot of important images in the tablet. However, this does not diminish the importance of the remaining part of the tablet being the first of its kind in the Damascus and surroundings.

 Indeed, it is a unique tablet as a result of its large size and mastery paved, but it carries a lot of decorative formations carried out in geometric shapes, including diamonds, arches and intersecting squares that give a starry form, scenes of plants and braids and  beautiful flowers of quartet petals in addition to some shapes and other symbols. Black, white, red, orange and gray colors were used in the tablet,  a statement by the Damascus Department of Antiquities stated.

The tablet, according to its initial date backs to the mid-fourth century AD, was a floor of a hall or a spacious lounge in a building which was probably a Roman temple or a palace dating back to the Roman era.

It is worth mentioning that some distinctive finds were found in the site formerly perhaps the most important is the stone altar presented as a gift to gods Zeus and  Isis and the Roman Emperor. It dates back to 188 AD, as demonstrated by the engraving it holds and the carved images on its four faces, including animal and human scenes. One of the scenes symbolizes the housewife of Barada River and the Kingdom of Abila. It is believed that Abila was the capital of the current town of Barada River.

Rima al -Khatib